According to the paper, it costs the typical berry-grower 11 kronor ($1.60) to produce one tub of strawberries - whereas foreign berries are being sold with a "grown in Sweden" label for just eight kronor.

I wonder what they are selling for. That narrow difference in purchase cost has to be weighed with transport and increased wastage.

While Ibron laments that the pirate packagers will most likely never be caught due to the lengthy analysis time of three weeks, he is hopeful that one particular lead in southern Sweden may prove fruitful.

"We have one seller's identity so we can trace them if there's a good enough reason for it," he told the paper.

Is this the equivalent of "we know the identity of the getaway driver and we're tracking him now" in order to get some idiot to turn himself in in hopes it will lead to the real perpetrators?

$1.60 for strawberries? Are they selling them by the quarter pint? At that price for a pint, I won't care where they come from. That's a good seasonal price. We often pay $2 to $5 for a pint box of U.S. strawberries imported several thousand miles from California, America's fruit and vegetable basket. In Europe you can eat strawberries year-round thanks to variable growing seasons in places from South Africa and Israel to Sweden. They sure pack a lot of geography into a small space in Europe. Canada has, as the Englishman observed, too much of everything.

brantgoose:$1.60 for strawberries? Are they selling them by the quarter pint? At that price for a pint, I won't care where they come from. That's a good seasonal price. We often pay $2 to $5 for a pint box of U.S. strawberries imported several thousand miles from California, America's fruit and vegetable basket. In Europe you can eat strawberries year-round thanks to variable growing seasons in places from South Africa and Israel to Sweden. They sure pack a lot of geography into a small space in Europe. Canada has, as the Englishman observed, too much of everything.

That is the cost to produce, and put them in the small tub. They tend to sell for 35:- which is about 5 bucks. Plus, the fact they are from Sweden is a big national thing, and the growing season for them here is pretty dang short.